1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the field of electronic communications, and more particularly relates to a method and system for allocation of e-mail communications.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
One difficulty with the use of a wide variety of available information handling systems is that customers who purchase and use information handling systems typically run into a wide variety of service and support problems and have a variety of service and support questions and requests for information about purchased information handling systems. One common way for customers to seek solutions to these service and support questions is to contact the manufacturer of the information handling system by phone. However, responding to phone inquiries is expensive and labor intensive for manufacturers. For example, service and support for responding to phone inquiries generally must be highly trained in order to promptly and correctly address customer inquiries. If customers request information beyond the expertise of service and support, the customer generally must wait on hold while the support personnel research the issue. The equipment and communication lines for such a process are expensive, especially if the service and support is located overseas. Further, service and support personnel must often cope with frustrated customers. Thus, manufacturers tend to be cautious in outsourcing telephone service and support to third parties, especially where the outsourced support speaks limited English.
One attractive alternative to telephone support is the use of e-mail support to respond to customer inquiries, whether the inquiries relate to information handling systems or other products or services. Responding to e-mail inquiries tends to require less expensive equipment than does responding to telephone inquiries and provides service and support with more time and less pressure in arriving at an effective response. Further, e-mail support may be provided by anonymous personnel so that language and diction barriers are reduced. Thus, e-mail inquiries are more easily outsourced for response by third parties, including by overseas personnel who speak English as a second language. However, tracking large quantities of e-mails to ensure proper and timely handling of customer service inquiries presents a substantial logistical problem. E-mail servers send e-mails to queues for response based on an e-mail address but provide limited access and flexibility for the preparation of responses once e-mails are assigned to queues. Thus, for instance, an information handling system manufacturer that outsources customer e-mail service requests will tend to have difficulty in tracking the working group that is assigned to respond, the service level of the response, the quality of the response and the cost of the outsourced service and support. This difficulty increases when working groups may be physically located anywhere in the world.